


Colonne Vertébrale

by MonoclePony



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 20s au, Boarding School AU, Gift Fic, Historical AU, Language Barrier, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oneshot, Straight A student!Marco, anti-German feelings, french!Jean, post-WW1 attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:18:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8981326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/pseuds/MonoclePony
Summary: It's the early 1920s, and Jean Kirschtein is a French boy in an English boarding school. Sent there by his father on strict instructions to become an upstanding young man, Jean figures it's going to be the worst winter term of his life. He wants to blend in. He has secrets. And the boys of Sawney House dormitory are not a private sort. He didn't reckon, however, on the one boy fluent in his language happening to be the one person he finds so intriguing. A gift fic for the jeanmarco gift exchange 2016. For Klementine369.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Klementine369](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klementine369/gifts).



> So my prompt was 'Jean is a new student from France and Marco, being the ever friendly student, is asked to give Jean a tour. They become friends to lovers?'  
> And, uh... well this is what spewed out. |D A 1920s boarding school AU with lots of language descriptions, identity crises and prejudice. It hits the prompts...mostly pahaha
> 
> I hope my giftee enjoys it!
> 
> As always, I can be found on my tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com or feel free to pop me a comment (aka I would love that I would love it so much I'm so tired rip me)

Jean wasn’t the sort of person who was used to being misunderstood. There was a knack, he’d been told, to speaking and being listened to. From a young age he was trained in asking questions in an acceptable manner for the desired result, and manipulating people into giving him what he wanted regardless. It was a cunning art, language, and something not everyone had the privilege of unravelling –his father’s words, and not Jean’s – and so he was expected to be grateful for the gifts bestowed upon him. The lessons. The articulation. The body language. The silver spoon that rested so perfectly on his parent’s tongues wasn’t quite so well forged on his own, but Jean knew enough to get him by.

That was why, whilst sat in an uncomfortable chair in a ruby and mahogany gilded office, a man blankly staring at him was not something Jean Kirschtein was accustomed to.

He’d been talking, or trying to talk, but every time he tried the man just looked more and more confused. Jean had since given up, and was now keeping his eyes firmly on the ground and willing himself not to turn red with embarrassment. He’d only been trying to answer the question. Just a stupid question, a question he’d heard a hundred times before, and had the answer polished to a fine gleam. _Not that it matters_ , he thought, _seeing as the fool doesn’t appear to speak French._

The man said something that included Jean’s surname and something about being ‘appropriate’, but he spoke too fast for Jean to catch it. He did, however, look expectantly at Jean once he was done talking. He was waiting for an answer.

_Damn._

Jean looked fervently at the woman who sat beside him. She was his chaperone, the woman hand-picked by his father to travel with and ensure Jean’s timely arrival at the boarding school he was to spend the rest of his school days. She had spent the entire ferry journey with him from Calais. She raised a brow at his scrutiny, as though chiding him for all the hours he’d spent abstaining from English lessons, and looked away in a haughty, dignified sort of way. Jean gritted his teeth. He was on his own. She was not here to translate for him. He pressed his knees together to stop them from shaking, and looked back at the man. _Headmaster,_ he corrected himself, _he’s your Headmaster now._

He was a portly man, exactly the kind of person Jean would expect to come from England. He looked as though he lived off Beef cattle and ale, all washed down with a dash of superiority complex. The tweed suit that stretched to bursting around his middle certainly aided the picture. Jean bit back this particular thought, and focused on the way the man tugged on his ear when he was thinking.

The Headmaster tried to speak again. A rich and pompous tumble of sounds came out of his mouth that half formed words Jean recognised but couldn’t pinpoint. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t understand.”

The Headmaster said the same sequence of words again, but louder.

Jean flinched at the volume, and frowned impatiently at him. Why was it that people always raised their voices when trying to get others to understand them? He could have bellowed or whispered the words and Jean still wouldn’t have been able to answer.

 _Slow down, you damn fool!_ Jean wanted to say, gritting his teeth. The thought occurred to him that he probably could, seeing as the Headmaster couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but one sharp eyed look from his chaperone and all thoughts of misbehaviour vanished from sight.

The Headmaster heaved out a great sigh.

Jean sighed too.

His father said it was to be a learning experience. “You are going to a school in England to learn the language and the culture of the place,” he’d said as Jean protested. “Learning English is a fine skill to have in this post war climate, you know. You’ll do well to listen to them, and maybe then they will listen to you. After all, there’s barely a school in France that will hold you - maybe one over the channel will have better luck.”

Jean huffed at the memory. That final sentence was what made him realise what this truly was. It wasn’t a means to an end, or a learning experience. It was a punishment. A punishment for _last time._ He hadn’t realised it before, not until he was sat in front of the Headmaster, unable to use the one tool that tended to get him out of mischief at home. He might as well have had his tongue cut out. _Yes_ , he thought, _this was definitely a punishment._

The Headmaster leaned over his desk and peered at Jean as though he was an extremely interesting animal in a Zoo. Jean stared back, the heat in his cheeks rising. The Headmaster gave a nod without speaking, like he had decided something Jean wasn’t important enough to know about, and rose to his feet. He crossed the room and plucked the receiver off an ornate looking telephone, pressing it to his ear as he continued to look at Jean like he would burst into flame. Jean watched him twirl a few numbers around the dial in the telephone’s centre, and the tinny crackle filled the room.

Jean twiddled his thumbs as the crackling continued, and looked to his chaperone. She was watching the Headmaster too, quiet amusement in her expression. Jean muttered, “How am I to learn necessities here if I can’t understand a single word of what anyone is saying?”

Her eyes fell to him then, dark and almond-shaped, and she shrugged. “I do not question your father. There is a method in what he is doing, I am sure of it.”

“I wonder how his mind works,” Jean grumbled, leaning back in his chair enough for it to creak unpleasantly. “Thinking it right to send me to an all boys’ school in the middle of nowhere…”

“You’ll make friends,” his chaperone assured him. “You never had any trouble making friends before.”

Jean gave a bitter, ironic laugh. “That was different,” he said. “They all spoke my language.”

She clearly didn’t have an answer for that, for she swept her head to the other side of the room and began to ignore him. Jean didn’t mind. She wasn’t exactly brilliant company.

The Headmaster put the receiver down and returned to his seat. Jean straightened instinctively, but after a few moments a door to the right of the room opened. Two people came out of it. One was a rakishly thin man with a drawn face and wispy blonde hair, and the other…

Well, the other looked about the same age as he was.

The boy was stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted towards the large window behind the Headmaster’s desk. He was taller than Jean by a head or so, but there was nothing intimidating in the way he stood, slightly bouncing on his heels. His brow was furrowed, distracted by something going on beyond the room in which he stood. Jean couldn’t see anything from where he was standing, but there was the faint sound of boys’ laughter coming from the crack in the open pane. He didn’t want to be here, Jean fathomed, especially if there was something to be laughed about outside.

The Headmaster breathed a sigh of relief at the new arrivals and waddled over to the thin man, wringing his hands and beginning to talk in the same bumbling way he had before. Jean couldn’t even attempt to keep up. The student beside them had stopped looking outside. Instead, he was looking right back at Jean.

It would have made him start, if it wasn’t such a soft gaze he was met with. It was a politely curious sort of look, the kind that put Jean’s fears at ease about being an inconvenience, and he offered a weak smile. The boy blinked, a little wrong-footed by the act of weakness, and offered a small smile in return. He had freckles, Jean noticed.

The Headmaster gestured to Jean and spoke for a moment longer to the other adult, their tongues wagging in their mouths and hands working to mould their noises into shapes only they could decipher. Jean waited. Then the Headmaster jerked his head towards Jean, said a final few words that sounded a little derisive to Jean’s ears, and slumped in his chair.

The thin man finally paid attention to him, and when he opened his mouth, Jean was delighted to hear French. “Please to excuse the Headmaster, he is not of the best at speaking French.”

Jean blinked. “Neither are you,” he said honestly, and got a smack around the head by his chaperone.

The student managed to cover up his snort of laughter with a cough. He was wearing a chunky cream knitted jumper, the kind Jean had seen in English advertisements back home, with thick black stripes at its hems and collar. It looked ghastly. It also looked wonderful. Jean wasn’t sure how it could be both things at once.

The thin man, thankfully, laughed too and gestured at the student. “Marco, this is Jean Kirschtein. He is a transfer student-” at this, Jean snorted, “- from Paris. Mr Kirschtein, this is Marco Bodt,” he introduced. “Marco is a very good student. He writes for the student paper and is in our polo team. He also speaks French very well, Jean. We think he is the best to help you in this time.”

The tips of the student’s ears turned pink at the praise, and he shuffled awkwardly as if to shake the barrage of awkwardly worded compliments off.

Jean, meanwhile, tried not to wince at the way his language was being butchered. He instead rose to his feet and held out a hand to the student with a tiny smile and a ridiculous jumper. “Hello,” he said, “it’s nice to meet you.”

Marco blinked at him again, the same gently stumped look, then took his hand and gave it a small squeeze as he shook it. “It’s good to meet you too, Jean,” he said. “Did you have a good trip?”

His words flowed. They interwove with each other. They even had a hint of the accent to them. Jean felt a smile bloom on his face, and he shook Marco’s hand a little more enthusiastically. “I did!” he said, scarcely believing the way Marco’s smile grew in understanding. “I really did, it was fine, it was… good.” He paused, wondering if Marco really was as good as the other man said he was. “The ferry had a good crossing, though the weather in the Atlantic was ghastly. Is the weather always so terrible here?”

Marco snorted out a laugh. “That is the sad truth,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “It’s what we English are known for – our godawful weather and our painfully awkward manners.”

Jean grinned and nodded. The elation from finally, _finally_ finding someone in the blasted country who understood him was fizzing around his chest and lifting it up like there was a balloon trapped inside him. Marco’s smile was still warm, wasn’t yet mocking, so Jean made the most of it and looked him up and down. Marco was dressed impeccably, with not a single crease in his trousers and every inch of his shoes shining. He was exactly what Jean had imagined when he’d thought of the English. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

It took him a second too long to realise he still had Marco’s hand in his grasp. He freed it with a hurried, “sorry,” and shoved his own firmly back into his pocket, the pink colour returning to his cheeks.

Marco’s smile was sheepish again. “It’s alright,” he said, gently waving away the concern. “You look a mite sick. Are you sure you’re feeling quite well?”

“Just nervous.” Jean squinted. “You could tell?”

Marco’s smile faltered an inch. “I’ve looked in mirrors before.” Jean let his own smile fade away. That wasn’t a strange translation, he didn’t think. Marco had said it word for word correctly. The way he had arranged those words made it sound sad, though, sadder than he was sure to have meant it to be.

A silence drew out thinly between them until Marco shook himself and frowned apologetically. “Goodness, where are my manners… would you like me to help you take that upstairs?” He gestured to the large suitcase sandwiched in between Jean’s and the chaperone’s seats.

Jean looked down at it dumbly for a few seconds too long, and then blurted out, “I don’t know where I’m going.”

Marco chuckled softly. “It’s fine, I can show you where to go. The Headmaster has made some arrangements, so you can stay in my dorm whilst you get used to everything.”

“Because you speak French?”

Marco nodded. “Because I speak French.” With that, he swept up Jean’s heavy trunk like it were full of feathers and made his leave known to the adults in the room with a gentle inclination of his head. The Headmaster nodded back, the thin man tried another string of garbled French in farewell, and Marco turned and left the room. Jean followed behind him like a drunken duckling, tripping over his feet in his effort to keep up.

Marco had a larger stride than he did. He was strong too, if he could carry Jean’s suitcase in such a way that didn’t afford him an inch of strain. Jean jogged along beside him, looking around with vague interest as he did so. His old school had been white and classical. This place was all wood and polish and brass, the kind that soaked up light and left little for those who dwelled inside. The paintings of previous Headmasters glowered down at the two boys as they ascended the nearest staircase, Marco scarcely pausing for breath as Jean panted beside him.

“Do you speak much English?” Marco asked over his shoulder as they walked.

“Very little,” Jean panted. “I know enough to get me by in harbours and coffee shops. I can read it better than I can speak it.”

Marco made a small chuffing noise that Jean thought could have been laughter. “Forgive me for saying so, but it’s a little odd that you are attending a school in England if you do not speak English well.”

“Tell that to my father,” Jean grumbled. “It was his miraculous idea.”

Marco peered at him. “So it was not your choice?”

“God, no! If I’d had my way, I’d still be in Paris.”

Marco hummed thoughtfully at that. “I have heard Paris is nice.”

“You’ve never been?”

Marco shrugged. “I have never had the need to. My father is a mathematician at Oxford, so all of our business is very… national.” He said this as though he greatly disliked the fact. “I would love to visit, though. One of the boys who writes for the paper, Connie, he has connections over there so he is always visiting.”

“Ah, right.” Jean offered to take his suitcase, but Marco swung it out of reach. “Do you enjoy writing for the paper?”

Marco beamed at him as though it was the perfect question to ask. “I love it! I would love to be a journalist one day. My family is not so keen, but I cannot think of anything I would rather do.”

Jean smiled back at Marco’s enthusiasm, and wondered what it was like to care about something that much.

They reached the middling section of the staircase when Marco stopped, and Jean almost slammed into the back of him. “Ow!” he complained, “Hey, what are you doing? Why did you st-” He followed the boy’s gaze upwards, and he saw why.

In the middle of all the dark wood and scowling academics, there was a shining bronze memorial. It was newly erected, he could tell by the shine, but that wasn’t what he paid attention to. His English was rusty, but he could discern from the few words he could read as to what it was. After all, the three words carved into the bronze in thick black letters were universal to most.

‘ _The Great War, 1917-1919.’_

Jean’s stomach dropped. It was a list of all the boys who had passed through the school and gone on to join the army. “They said it would be over by Christmas,” he muttered under his breath. He wasn’t sure Marco had heard him. “What a waste,” he breathed in English, his eyes flickering over every name etched into the polished metal like a candle flame. “What a goddamn waste.”

Marco looked at him in slight surprise, but looked away again quickly. He said nothing.

Jean took a step closer and reached out a hand, laying it flat on the cold, clinical record of boys. Each of those names stood for an empty bed at home. Why would they put this in the middle of the school? Why would they want to be reminded of how many boys hadn’t made it home?

Marco sniffed and turned from the plaque. He said something in English, but Jean didn’t want to ask what it meant. It sounded barbed. It sounded bitter. It sounded like _grief._

“Should we keep going?” he ended up asking, back in French, and Marco nodded without looking at him.

As they continued up towards the dorm, Jean tried his very best not to take Marco’s hand for reassurance. He had a feeling the other boy needed it.

* * *

If Jean had thought he was going to be able to settle in with any degree of ease, he was to be sorely disappointed. ‘Sawney House’ was a long stretch of beds in what seemed like a slightly wider equivalent of a corridor at the very top of the school, with few options for privacy. The other boys that shared the dorm were what Jean liked to call maniacs. They spoke too loudly, made noises that Jean wasn’t sure were even meant to be speech, and took great delight in tormenting and torturing one another. Jean was no stranger to the goings on of an all boys’ school, of course, but this place appeared to host these bouts of mischief as an ongoing competition.

Jean had also forgotten what it was like to be new. Everyone stared at him as they passed him in the corridors. People gawped at him in the dining room, when he was halfway through breakfast and having the sincere urge to throw it back up again. Some of the teachers even had the gall to watch him over their books or spectacles as they worked in classes. He might as well have been walking around the school grounds painted purple.

His dorm mates were no exception to the rule; though they all shook his hand and offered simple greetings to make him ‘feel welcome’, all it did was make him feel like he was far too different to simply blend in – and that was the most terrifying thought of all. He didn’t care about friends. He didn’t want to be known. He just wanted to exist. Being a part of the scenery was something he wanted more than anything; it was safe, stuck in the background. It was comfortable. It was quiet. It was _easy._

Unfortunately, he didn’t appear to have that sort of luck.

Jean spent the better half of three days perched on his bed glowering at the boys who sat at the other end, bombarding him with questions in garbled French, English and Latin until his head hurt. He managed to answer a few questions at first, spoken in carefully worded French or base line English, but that turned out to be the biggest mistake he could have made. The boys’ questions increased tenfold, their voices clamouring and skipping over one another in their desperation to be heard, but to Jean it was as unintelligible as the static of a radio station. He just sat there, glowered and apologised for not understanding a word of what they were saying.

After the fifteenth ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand’, the boys lost interest and drifted back to their own beds, talking in low voices to one another. Jean let his chest grow leaden as he watched them leave. They were disappointed. They had been excited to live with someone from another country, someone exotic and foreign, but were not impressed with what they had found. He was sure his father would be jumping for joy at the news.

Marco was the only saving grace. Once the other boys had gone back to their respective beds, or wandered off to cause trouble somewhere else, he came to perch on Jean’s bed himself, head tilted to one side almost comically. “Aren’t you the popular one,” he commented.

Jean flushed “Hush your mouth,” he snorted, throwing a pillow at him. “I’m just a novelty. It’ll wear off.”

Marco laughed and cradled the pillow in his arms. “Maybe so, but you won’t be shot of them for a while. The boys like to have their questions answered.”

“I don’t know what they’re even asking,” Jean complained, knocking his head on the wall as he leant backwards. “How the devil am I meant to shut them up if I can’t talk to them in the first place?”

Marco shrugged. “You learn.” He played with the fraying hem of the pillowcase as he talked. It made it difficult to lip read, but Jean found he didn’t need to – Marco’s pronunciation was good enough on its own. “You will pick things up. It is easy as pie, really. And if not, you say something that sounds mildly threatening and let them stew.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jean snorted. “You’re probably a right brain, learning French so perfectly and everything.”

Marco raised a brow, a flattered smile appearing on his face. “You think my French is perfect?”

Jean’s blush grew hotter. “N-no!” he denied, folding his arms. “It’s just… better than the Headmaster’s.”

“Well, the Headmaster is a prig and an oaf, so I am not really surprised by that.”

“It’s better than the other one. That thin man.”

“The French teacher?”

“Dear God,” Jean sighed.

* * *

Jean grossly underestimated how difficult it was to communicate with someone who didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. There had been times when he had spoken of something intellectual in the wrong kind of social circle, but this was completely different.

There was an exposure to it that Jean loathed, a kind of glaring obviousness that he was not like the others and was something to be looked at or pitied. It reminded Jean of being a child, stood inside a forest of legs and skirts with every voice bouncing over his head, just out of reach. None of the boys bothered to lower their voices as he passed them, assuming the Dumb French Student wouldn’t be able to understand whatever they were saying anyway, and Jean never said or did anything to prove them wrong.

Lessons were something of an uphill struggle. The admissions team had attempted to put him into most classes with Marco in order to give him an interpreter should he have needed it, but Jean felt far too guilty to ask the other boy to stop his own work and translate. It wasn’t all bad; for starters, Jean found that a vast majority of lessons were taught via memory. Their history teacher, for example, would bleat out a line from a textbook and expect it to be parroted back to him by the entire class. It wasn’t the best way to learn history, in Jean’s opinion, but it was remarkably effective for improving his English. And, after the first few days, the teachers had decided that Jean was not only foreign but incorrigible and so didn’t bother to pick on him for answers.

The boys in his dorm had calmed down a little by the fourth or fifth night, and now only a few came over to attempt conversations with him. One, a smaller boy with a shock of dark hair and vibrantly green eyes was called Eren – at least, that was what Marco tended to shout whenever the boy did something uncouth or inappropriate – and was the most persistent.

After a bit of frustration and a hasty talk with Marco, Eren explained in the worst French Jean had ever heard that he was going to go into the military when he left the school, and wanted to know if Jean had any information about the state of the French army. “He just wondered,” Marco added, saving Eren the pain of trying to speak French again, “because his father expects him to become an officer, and Franco-British relations would be beneficial. You know, in the state of the world as it is.”

Jean bristled, small warnings firing off in the back of his mind. “I don’t understand,” he said shortly.

Marco frowned. “But Jean-”

“I. Don’t. Understand.” Jean levelled his gaze with Marco’s, unsure if his dark scowl was covering up the uncomfortable twisting feeling in his stomach well enough.

Marco hesitated, before muttering something to Eren. The other boy scoffed and spat a few more words before leaving.

“What did he say?” Jean asked when Marco looked back to him, pained.

Marco hesitated. “I do not think it will translate well,” he said, shrugging as his gaze fell to the bedsheet he was twisting around his hands. “Do not worry. Eren is not very… what’s the word… _accommodating_ at the best of times.”

The twist in Jean’s stomach squeezed painfully, and he nearly choked on the grumble that wheedled its way out of his mouth. He shot Eren an ugly look, but the boy was too far away to notice.

Still, everything was going as well as it could have been, and Jean began to be lulled into a false state of security throughout the first week of his school term. Marco struck a bargain with another boy to swap beds, so Jean now had a better opportunity for sleep; the boy who had slept next to him, Thomas, had snored terribly. Marco was often busy and always a little hassled; both his bed and under it was always covered in books or writing paper, and Jean presumed it was due to his deadlines at the paper. It was a good natured kind of messy, though, the kind that was considered acceptable amongst boys of their standing, and it was certainly never picked up on by the warden who inspected their dorms daily. Sports was gruelling but doable, as being ordered to run a distance or hit a ball tended to be common sense. Jean was even beginning to pick up on more phrases. The little bubble of hope that things would be okay began to grow still bigger in Jean’s gut – but it was burst all too soon by the arrival of the post.

Jean’s letter from his father came after the first week of lessons. It was something Jean snatched at with fumbling hands when he saw it poking out of the mailbox for the floor, his heart racing with the worry that someone might have seen it. A better explanation, therefore, would be that Jean _slammed_ himself into the arrangement of pigeon holes and shoved the letter unceremoniously into the inside pocket of his coat before anyone could see him do it, but Jean was never one for specifics. The weight of the letter as it rested in his pocket gave a comforting sort of warmth, but also held a blazing tremor of fear.

Jean looked around to ensure nobody was around before he brought it out of his coat and dared look at it. The elegant loop of his father’s writing was unmistakable, along with the slightly purple ink he’d bought on an excursion to Austria. He broke the seal of the envelope and drew out the first sheaf of paper. He only needed to glance at it before the fear spiked in his gut and he shoved it unceremoniously back into his crumpled envelope. He would find a way of reading it when there was no one to notice. That was how he’d done it before. It was the way he’d always done it.

He looked behind him again – and saw that Marco was making his way towards the building, looking a little tired. He made sure the letter was lodged safely in his coat before walking out to meet him. “Marco!” he called out, lifting up a hand to wave.

Marco’s head jolted as he looked up, startled at the sound of his name. He’d been walking with his head down – all the better to hide his face, Jean noted. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the edges of his eyes were a little reddened from the cold. He had been frowning. Marco looked so much older when he wasn’t smiling.

When the brown eyes lost their glaze and actually saw Jean in front of them, the tension rippling like static across the other boy’s shoulders lessened. “O-oh,” he said, “g-good day.”

Marco used the formal term of greeting. He hadn’t used that before.

Jean faltered in his enthusiasm – perhaps he was coming on too strong – when Marco’s eyes widened in understanding. “H-hi!” he corrected hastily. “Hello, hi, uh…hello.” He sighed. “Please excuse me, I forgot myself for a moment.”

“That’s okay.” Jean bit the inside of his cheek. Maybe it wasn’t Marco who had forgotten himself. Maybe it was _him._ Marco wasn’t a friend, he reminded himself. He was just someone who could speak French. That was all it was. He was putting up with him. Yes, that was it. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, mollified.

To his relief, Marco smiled. “You didn’t, old boy, no harm done. I was just coming back from-”

“Old boy?” Jean repeated. “Why did you call me that?”

Marco’s smile became politely confused before morphing into a toothy grin. It looked like a breath of fresh air had just played across his furrowed, thoughtful face. “It’s what we call each other here. A lot of people in England use it. Old boys. It doesn’t translate well, I must admit, but… it’s like a term of affection. You know you’re one of us if someone calls you that.”

“Oh.” Jean experienced a swell of pride at this. “So I’m one of you?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” Marco asked.

“Old boy,” Jean repeated, this time in English. Marco had said it made more sense in English, and he felt it. The sounds were warm and fraternal in a way that was lacking in the ‘my dear’s and ‘sweet love’s of his native tongue. It was love without romance, fondness without the trouble of what it meant. Jean liked it. _Old boy._ He realised he was smiling a little too broadly when Marco gave a small chuckle and nudged his shoulder. His nose was a soft pink in the cold weather, and Jean tried not to look at it too much. “I’m awfully sorry, I interrupted you just now,” he said, covering up his thoughts with embarrassment. “Where were you coming from?”

That, apparently, was the altogether _wrong_ question to have asked. Marco’s smile weakened. “Oh, just now? I was, uh, I was telling the head of the student paper that I have to give it up.”

Jean stared at him. Of all the things he’d imagined Marco to be doing, quitting the student paper definitely wasn’t one of them. “Why in the hell were you doing that?” he asked.

Marco baulked at the harshness of Jean’s vocabulary. “My father made me see that… that it was an unnecessary distraction from my studies,” he said. His smile was definitely forced now.

Marco didn’t speak much of his family. Jean had recognised the English words for Father, Mother, Parents, Uncles peppered throughout the other boys’ chatter in the dorm room. One had a politician for a father; one, like Jean, was the son of an ambassador. Everyone spoke about their family; their social connections, their importance in the nation, who had been sent to war and who was far too important to be spared. Marco forever remained on the sidelines, silent and unmoving.

“You love the paper,” Jean said, confused. “You told me so, when we were first introduced. You said you wanted to be a journalist.”

“I said I liked it,” Marco corrected gently, his smile now paper thin. “And we’re allowed to have silly fantasies when we’re young. It’s time to grow out of them. My father was right. It was a distraction. I really should focus on my schoolwork.”

The words that were coming out of Marco’s mouth didn’t sound natural. They were practiced, rehearsed, _something_ \- but they weren’t what Marco believed. “You said ‘love’,” Jean pressed impatiently.

Marco shrugged. “Then maybe my French is not as perfect as you thought it was.”

Jean squinted at him. “You know, I have the queerest feeling that you are lying through your teeth, Marco Bodt.”

Marco flushed at this. “Sure I am,” he said, his voice too strained and high to be normal.

“You _are_!” Jean demanded hotly. “I know you are!”

“Listen, Jean,” Marco began, an edge to his voice that Jean hadn’t heard before, “With the greatest possible respect intended, what I choose to do with my life is of my concern. Not yours.” Jean opened his mouth to protest, but Marco held up a hand. “Please. My father is thinking of me. He does this because he cares about me. He wants the best. Is your father not the same?” 

The letter burning a hole in Jean’s coat was enough evidence for Jean to know that fathers often got it wrong.

But he conceded, still frowning, and Marco pretended to be okay for a little while longer. He was quieter, sure enough, but Jean only noticed because he suddenly had no one to talk to. It looked odd to see Marco’s bedside table, usually so full of unfinished articles and research books, clinically empty. Marco went to the library to study, and didn’t invite Jean along. He was left to the mercy of the other boys, and though Eren shot him a shrewd, almost too knowing look, no one came over. It was as though there were walls rising on either side of his bed, and there was no one willing to scale them.

Jean bit his lip. He couldn’t continue like this. He couldn’t glue himself to one person and rely on them, no matter how much he wanted to. He watched Eren regaling some fantasticial story to an open mouthed blonde who he assumed was ‘Armin’, and tried to force himself to pick up something, anything, any sort of hint as to what the idiot was wittering on about. He gave up after Eren threw his hands in the air and Armin burst into a torrent of laughter. He needed Marco. If listening to the other boys talk was like trying to interpret shapes through a broken window, Marco was an open door. He knew better than to go looking for him, however – he knew when people needed their own space. Marco needed a lot of it.

The only other person he cared about had written the letter now very well squashed in the depths of his schoolbag. Jean decided to wait until after curfew to read his father’s updates – the warden couldn’t give him a detention for wanting to use the bathroom – and so when the lights were switched off and the muffled conversation of students ceased, Jean slipped out of bed and padded to the door, the letter stuck down the side of his waistband and his heart thumping a terrified jazz beat against his ribs.

The hallway beyond was deserted, nothing but the sound of sleep reaching his ears, and he began to creep across the landing to the bathroom on the other side of the building. Halfway there, he started to run, and as he slammed into the nearest cubicle and drew his feet up onto the seat to hide himself, he opened the letter with trembling fingers.

He devoured it like a starving man.

His father was ensuring the Versailles Treaty was being upheld. He had a few connections, but they were churning up little. Germany was in shambles. The debt that was settling upon them was akin to the burden Atlas was forced to bear, and even as he read Jean could hear the titan of Germany groaning under the weight. His stomach plummeted when he read that the stables they had once visited with his grandparents had been destroyed. The horses had been sent to the battlefield. None of them had returned. His father’s childhood home had become a graveyard for shells and screaming, crying soldiers. There was nothing left – nothing to show that a Kirschtein had ever set foot in Germany. The name was the only thing remaining, the one thing that burdened the family like a brand.

Jean crumpled up the paper when he was done and slipped off the toilet seat, exiting the cubicle with a wheezy, shaking sigh. He stumbled to the sink and splashed his face with water, the chill shocking him into keeping his tears in check. He chanced a look in the mirror, and hated what he saw. He saw a traitor, holding back tears. He saw someone trying not to cry for a country everyone hated. It felt as though parts of his body were getting rejected by his own hatred, the blood roaring in his ears traitorous blood, enemy blood. The blood of a monster.

He clenched his fist tighter around the letter and debated throwing it into the nearest fire the moment he got back to the dormitory, when he heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him.

He wheeled around.

The bathroom was empty.

The noise, however, persisted. He carefully smoothed out the letter, folding it back up neatly and tucking it in his waistband once more, before taking a step towards one of the cubicles. The noise was soft, muted, like someone was trying to hold in breath but was finding it exceedingly difficult. Jean paused. The breathing stopped. Whoever it was appeared to be holding their breath, willing him through their mind alone to leave. Jean waited there for a second longer, his mouth opening to ask if they were alright, before he closed it with a snap.

He turned and left, making sure to shut the door behind him before stealing back to his bed. He had to stop himself from turning over to look at the bed beside him. He knew it was going to be empty.

* * *

“Teach me English.”

Jean had been planning to ask it for the past couple of days. Since giving up the paper, Marco hadn’t seemed himself. There was a subtle kind of moroseness to the way he moved and spoke that hadn’t been there before; when he joked with the other boys, there was a shadow on his face that refused to be shaken, and when he thought no one was looking, the smile that always seemed so natural on his face dropped. He threw himself into his schoolwork like he’d said he would, but it wasn’t healthy. Marco was gone for hours now, and always alone. He came back just before curfew with his head hanging low and his eyes barely open. Jean had told him to stop, but all he’d received was a paper smile and a soft assurance that he was fine, that he was just reading ahead.

Marco needed a distraction, no matter what his father said. And Jean reckoned he could be pretty good at that.

Marco looked up from his schoolbooks to see Jean stood over his desk, flushed from the cold weather outside and breathing heavily. Jean hadn’t exactly _run_ there, but he had to be sure Marco was in the right place. Had had, after all, still not gotten the hang of the school’s layout.

Marco blinked pleasantly. “I beg your pardon?”

“I…want…” Jean said, in a very poor attempt at English, “for you to…tutelage me.”

Marco blinked again. “You want me to tutor you?” he corrected.

Jean swallowed dryly. “Yes.”

Marco, with a look of relief, dropped his pen onto his notebook. “You’re already doing well, Jean,” he said, slipping into French easily, “and I am not the best person to teach you. You would be better off going to one of the teachers. Professor Saunders has a very good grasp on the English-”

“No.” Jean shook his head. “I want it to be you.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Because…” Jean huffed and gestured to the empty seat opposite him. Marco nodded his assent, and Jean sat. “Because you are a good teacher.”

Marco tried his best not to look flattered at the praise, but there was a slight pink tinge to the tips of his ears as he threw a slightly more genuine smile across the table. “You have never seen me teach, Jean,” he said.

“I just know you’ll be good at it, then.”

Marco’s brow rose sceptically. Jean waited, folding his arms and trying his best to look as nonchalant as possible. What felt like an hour passed before Marco gave a small sigh, picked up his pen and said, “Okay.”

Jean unfolded his arms. “Okay?” he parroted back.

“Yes, Jean, okay.” Marco wrote down another sentence from the textbook in front of him and then glanced up at him. “It will have to be during our leisure periods. I won’t have time to do it at any other time.”

“That’s fine!” Jean said quickly, scarcely believing it had been so easy to get Marco on side. “That’s… that’s great, that’s fantastic, thank you.”

Marco snorted. “Jean, it’s fine. Really.” He went back to writing, a thoughtful frown appearing on his face. “Just… do try to be on time, old boy, I really need to keep to a schedule.”

Jean grinned at him and jumped to his feet. “Tonight?” he asked.

Marco choked. “J-Jean, I have a paper to write…”

“I can help you. Tonight?”

“It’s about the Fall of Feudalism.”

“Marco.”

With a good-natured sounding huff, Marco rolled his eyes and let a proper smile fall loose. “Fine,” he said, grinning.  

Jean grinned back at him. “Thank you, old boy,” he said, wincing at the sound of his voice in English, and patted Marco on the shoulder heftily as he passed. “I appreciate it!”

It turned out that Marco was as patient a teacher as Jean had expected him to be. The first few lessons were full of frustrations and failure, but Marco was careful to skirt around the problems they had encountered and focused on the meagre successes instead.

Jean hadn’t expected it to be easy. There were letters that were sounded differently, no foreseeable genders to the words and when spoken in different dialects it was like learning an altogether different strain of the language. Jean himself couldn’t complain; different regions of France, after all, had their stresses and accents, and Marco made a point of explaining this whenever Jean got frustrated.

Talking English was a clumsy thing; Jean’s tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth, unyielding to the alien ways he was asking it to move, and whenever he managed to say something remotely English it came out in a very thick, obvious accent which Jean loathed. He hadn’t known he had an accent before. Now he had noticed, it stood out stark and naked amongst the reserved twitters and squawks of the other boarders. When he had asked Eren to pass the butter at breakfast, Eren had knocked the milk jug over with an elbow with how hard he had laughed, and caused the nearest teacher to bark out a scolding.

“You’ll have an accent, Jean,” Marco soothed as Jean complained loudly, in French, that he sounded ridiculous. “I have a British accent when I speak French, after all.”

That was the thing. Marco didn’t sound strange when he spoke French. He had the softness of the consonants down to a fine art, the gentle click of select ‘T’s and ‘K’s like he had been speaking French his entire life, but when he spoke English – that was when his voice came into its own.

Marco sounded beautiful in his own tongue. Jean had mistakenly believed that ‘old boy’ was the reason for the warmth in the language, but it wasn’t. It was just Marco. In English, his voice crackled and flickered like the embers of a dying fire, the warmth flooding through Jean’s toes and leaving him rather cosy afterwards. Marco sounded like he belonged in the country, with fields surrounding him from either side and reins to a great chestnut Hunter in his hand. Jean listened to him speaking like it was a song created specifically for him, and he didn’t care if some of the words were lost along the way. It always meant that he was left fumbling for his own vocabulary when Marco asked him to repeat things back to him, but it was a sort of embarrassment that Jean could handle, especially when Marco laughed.

The warmth began to linger the longer he stayed with Marco, like every little smile or touch or laugh was adding kindling to the hearth built in his chest. At one point, when Marco’s hand skimmed past Jean’s own to reach a book of conjugated verbs, the skin even tingled. Jean tried not to dwell on it; it was what having a friend felt like, he told himself after another English lesson had caused Marco to flop his head onto Jean’s shoulder and laugh into his jumper. It was the belonging feeling, the comradery, that was what was causing the warmth. Despite his excuses, the feeling troubled him.

He’d spoken to his father once about the possibility of disliking girls after a failed courtship with a girl on his street – he had been six at the time – and Jean could remember the way his father curled his lip and let out a small bark of laughter. “Jean, there are men and there are women. Would God have created two separate beings if He wanted us to copulate with those of the same sex? Goodness, no.” It was a logical argument for a six year old, but ten years later and Jean wasn’t so sure. There was no way that he would ever voice these doubts, however – he valued his life, for one thing. The idea that these feelings were more than platonic for someone like Marco was a little terrifying – but also a little thrilling, too. Jean had to admit, in his more vulnerable moments, that the thought of kissing Marco was not an altogether unpleasant thing to imagine.  But he kept it to himself, and nurtured the warmth just enough for it to be safe.

Weeks passed and Jean’s language improved. They began to take their lessons out of the library and began doing them in empty classrooms, dining rooms and any small nook they could find that would fit two teenage boys and a small assortment of phrasebooks and dictionaries. One day, they even stayed in the dormitory. The other boys had disappeared somewhere, and when Jean asked why it was so quiet, Marco hummed thoughtfully. “I expect they’ve gone to the town,” he said, running a finger down the page of his book.

“Town?” Jean questioned. He was trying his best to keep to English during his lessons; lately it had been going pretty well. “Why are they going there?”

His words sounded cumbersome and lazy to him, but Marco beamed at the effort. “Oh, most of them are there to pick up girls,” he said, looking back to the book.

Jean blinked at him. “To… pick…up?”

Marco paused. “To…flirt? Do you know what ‘flirt’ is?”

Jean nodded. He knew that one. “They are flirting with the girls?” he asked.

Marco nodded. “Most likely. They’re insufferable, the lot of them. Give them a whiff of skirts and they’re salivating like hound dogs.” When Jean looked blank, Marco shook his head. “Sorry. They are… not good with girls, but believe they are.”

Jean chuckled at that. And then – “are you good with the girls?”

Marco had been just about to gulp down some water from his glass, and Jean’s question appeared to have chased it down far quicker than Marco wanted. As he choked and got his breath back, he wheezed, “wh-why do you want to know that?”

Jean shrugged. “Making conversation.” The warmth in the pit of his stomach flared up enough to singe.

Marco chewed on his lip for a moment, setting the glass back down on his bedside table and closing the dictionary with a gentle _thunk._ “I wouldn’t really know,” he admitted eventually.

Jean frowned. “You have never… talked to girls?”

“I’ve spoken to them, yes, but… never gone steady with one. And I don’t mean it like that either,” Marco added as Jean began to smirk, “I’m not some sort of animal. I mean that I was never really around girls when I was growing up, and I’m still not now.” Marco frowned as he said it, like it had only just occurred to him how odd that was. “Not ones my age, anyway.”

Jean put his book down too. His brain was aching, and he figured it needed a rest. He crossed his legs neatly underneath one another and leant forward, watching the way Marco’s eyes fell anywhere but him. He wondered if it was nerves from talking about an embarrassing subject. Or was it something else? Was Marco avoiding his eyes because he couldn’t bear for Jean to see what was in them if he did? He leaned closer, and Marco’s eyes snapped back to him. They looked a little alarmed. Jean moved back, adding a stretch to cover it up. “It sounds like you were all wrapped up in cotton wool by your parents,” he said, giving up and switching back to French.

The change seemed to settle Marco, for he gave a grateful smile and changed too. “My father doesn’t like the way boys treat girls at parties. He doesn’t like the way they fawn over each other and giggle amongst themselves.”

“He doesn’t like the idea of love?” Marco’s mouth snapped shut. Jean knew he’d been too bold, but he couldn’t help it. “Your father does not sound like the sort of person I would like to meet,” he said, bolder still.

Marco glowered at him. “My father is doing what he thinks is right.”

“Exactly. What _he_ thinks is right.” Jean sighed. “He’s not God, Marco.”

“He does what he does because he loves me,” Marco said, waspishly. “What does your father do? Cart you off to a school in a foreign country so he can be rid of you?”

It struck Jean between the ribs and lodged there like a blade. Marco’s face dropped. Even as he started apologising, Jean could feel the anger simmering beneath the surface, disregarding the warmth for the moment. _Punishment. It was a punishment. Remember what happened last time._ He couldn’t afford to let his temper get the better of him. Jean inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and fixed Marco with a sharp, icy glare. “Maybe you’re right,” he muttered, shifting back a few paces so he was resting his back against the headboard of the bed. “Maybe that is why I’m here.”

“Jean-”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore.” Jean propped an arm on his knee and tried to shake off the anger gnawing along his ribs. It was a dark creature, his anger, and he wasn’t the sort who liked to show it off. The longer he stared at Marco, the weaker it became, until it was nothing more than a bitter wisp on the air. He shrugged it off like an overcoat and drew his knee up to his chest, resting his chin there instead of his arm. “I’m glad you didn’t go with the other boys to see girls,” he mumbled. He hoped it was too soft to be heard, but it came out louder than he’d expected. English. He had to get the hang of its volume.

Marco paused in opening the book again and glanced up at him, eyes narrowing like he was trying to figure out a tricky problem. Jean stared back. They didn’t speak, but something passed between them – Jean was certain – and it made Marco flush a little and drop the book onto the bed. “W-well,” he fumbled, “I’m glad to. You’re… you’re not bad company, you know.” Apology was still written across Marco’s face when he looked up again, scrawled there in an unsteady hand, but the slight pinkish tinge to his cheeks as well as his ears melted it away after a little while. When he smiled, it was more than Jean deserved.

The second letter came that night, but Jean didn’t have the same urge to sneak out and read it. He left it tucked under his mattress, and listened to the easy breathing of the boy in the bed next to him. Inside, the warmth raged.

* * *

“Try again. I would like…”

“I…would…like…”

“A cup.”

“A…cup…”

“of coffee…”

“of…coffee.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

Jean slumped back in his seat and washed a hand over his face, wasted by the effort. Marco just smiled encouragingly at him, nudging the steaming mug of hot chocolate towards him. The classroom they were sat in was deserted. Lessons had finished for the winter break, and the majority of the school was either back home or out in the snow. Jean squinted as he looked out at the blinding white world outside the window, the vast carpets and blankets of snow draped upon tree branches and fence posts and every nook and cranny it could reach. It wasn’t as deep as it would get back home, but it was enough to cause excitement amongst the boys.

It was strange, Jean thought as he watched a first year getting bowled over backward by a boulder sized snowball from a guffawing fifth year, to what extent people would go to in order to get cold. He cupped the hot chocolate between his hands and smiled at the sensation fizzing through his palms. Give him heat any day. Give him the South of France in summer, with the meadows full of buzzing bees and rows of wild lavender. Give him the gentle chill of summer nights and the touch of sun-warmed rocks. He pouted. God, he missed it.

Marco, however, seemed to like the winter. He still had a thick knitted scarf knotted about his throat even in the considerable warmth of the classroom, though his coat lay forgotten on the back of his chair. He had a slightly red nose from the temperature drop outside, and he often laughed at the way his breath turned to smoke in the air. Today he had gone scouting for warm drinks as Jean’s teeth chattered, but now he was back and they were relatively warmed up, the lessons were beginning again. “Don’t I have a holiday from these too?” Jean whined, the complaint not reaching his eyes as he took a careful sip of the hot chocolate.

“You were the one who wanted to learn,” Marco pointed out, ever the smart-alec even in French.

Jean puffed out a ball of air in mock annoyance, and dragged the book Marco was poring over towards him. “How did you learn French anyway, if you’ve never been?”

“My brother taught me. He had a girl, she lived in Lille and came over to study here. That’s how they met.” Jean’s eyes flickered up to meet Marco’s. Marco hadn’t ever spoken about a brother before, and they both knew it. “He died in the war,” Marco explained, before Jean could ask. “Ypres.”

Jean’s voice stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Marco’s tone was of gentle reassurance, of acceptance. “He died defending his country. That’s all he’d ever have wanted.” He paused. “Do you have brothers?”

Jean hesitated. “One,” he said, “older. I haven’t seen him for years. He was in the War too.”

“Did he survive?”

Jean frowned. “I don’t know.”

“That seems awfully odd, not to know if your own brother made it through the war.”

“We’re not close.” Jean made a valiant attempt to look deeply interested in something on the page. “There was a family argument.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Jean shrugged. “Don’t be sorry. I have the chance to patch things up with my brother.” It had come out more insensitive than Jean would have liked, but it didn’t seem to bother Marco too much. Jean hoped that at least part of it was lost in translation – though Marco would be the one person that excuse didn’t work on. “Anyway,” Jean said, trying to change the subject, “what are your plans for-”

“Oh no you don’t,” Marco said in an irritatingly singsong voice, wagging his finger in front of Jean’s nose, “ask in English.”

Jean glowered at him. “Fine,” he said, in his still strangled English, “What are your…er… what are you doing for the… for the…”

“For Christmas?” Marco finished for him.

“Yes, Christ…Christ…mass?”

Marco nodded to confirm that Jean had indeed got it right, and answered, “I don’t really know yet. I usually spend time with my family. What about you, do you have plans?”

“I…” Jean paused as he tried to work out the best way to say it in English. “I am…probably…going to stay here.”

Marco frowned. “Really? But it’s Christmas.”

“It’s not so bad,” Jean assured him. “I did it when I was in France.”

“You never went back for Christmas?” Marco’s jaw was almost dropping now.

Jean laughed. “I do not see what the problem is.”

“Christmas is a time for family, Jean!” Marco looked genuinely distressed at this news, his brows pinched in confusion at the very thought of Jean spending the holidays alone. “What do your family do?”

Jean thought about it. “I do not know. They like to argue. They will probably do a bit of that.”

Marco looked thoughtful as Jean took another sip of hot chocolate. The drink seemed to warm him from the tips of his toes, and he couldn’t help the blissful expression that appeared on his face moments later. “Now, I have said a lot in English. My brain is tired.” _I also,_ he thought to himself, _sound like I am a dumb infant learning to talk for the first time._ “It is your turn to get your brain working. Speak to me in French again.”

“Stay with me.”

Jean peered over the rim of his hot chocolate mug and squinted at Marco. It was in French, unmistakably so, but had he really heard what he thought he just had? “Pardon?”

“Stay with me. For Christmas.” Marco his cheeks swiftly turning the same colour as his nose. “My mother, she likes to cook for lots of people. And my father, he isn’t at the house very often. And we have a big house, you could stay in any room you wanted and you could do as little or as much as you like but…”

Marco was rambling. Jean hadn’t ever truly seen him ramble before. He was usually so composed and proper and particular that it hadn’t occurred to Jean that Marco could even get flustered. But that was definitely what he was doing now, his French bumping clumsily into English as the urge to talk over his own thoughts became too strong. Jean was caught up in the riptide, understanding the majority but missing a few things that were mumbled or blurted. That didn’t matter, though. What mattered was that Marco wanted him. Marco wanted him to come home with him, wanted to introduce him to his family, _wanted_ to spend time with him instead of just _having_ to– and it occurred to Jean that was precisely what he wanted too. It was this that, possibly, led to what happened next.

Jean wasn’t sure what exactly had been running through his head as he rose out of his seat and leant across the stretch of desk between them. Maybe it was the kick of validation that he wasn’t kept around as a school project, but because Marco actually enjoyed his company. Perhaps it was the warmth in his stomach rising to a flame without warning. Or maybe, just maybe, he just acted instinctively. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Jean practically launched himself across the table, swooped down and kissed Marco on the cheek. At least, that was where he’d been aiming. Marco moved an inch, just an inch, and Jean caught the edge of his lips too. Only once he felt the quiver of Marco’s lip against his did he realise what he was doing.

Everything shattered.

Jean pulled back as though a gunshot had gone off, horror freezing in the pit of his stomach. What had he gone and done _that_ for?! Marco stared wide-eyed up at him, the corner of his mouth a little flushed with the contact, and Jean scuttled backwards, almost knocking over his hot chocolate mug in the process. “I’m sorry!” he yelped, shaking hands grabbing for his briefcase. “I’m r-really sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t explain how sorry I…I’m sorry.” His French was getting thicker, his own words crashing into one another and veering off course, and he could see that Marco wasn’t listening. He was too busy frozen in place, staring up at him as though he had just killed a man in front of him.

Jean could have laughed it off. He could have said that it was a French thing, that he would have done it in gratitude to anyone. But that sort of lie wasn’t going to slide, not this time. Not with Marco. It was the lingering handshake all over again. Heat blazed across Jean’s cheeks and across his body, boiling away the horror and turning it into something far more dangerous. “I have to go,” he said. “I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” He stopped talking. There was nothing to say. He couldn’t lie and say it didn’t mean anything. He couldn’t keep looking down at Marco, with his hand halfway to his face to touch the spot where Jean’s lips had grazed him.  

“Jean-” Marco began, sounding choked, but Jean didn’t give him time to say a word more. He was already leaving, gathering up his books and flinging his coat over his shoulder. He had to go. Now. He had to leave before he did something he regretted, something that was led by the fire raging in his stomach and not by the horror screaming through his mind at what he’d done.

He had been so close to normal. So _goddamn_ close.

Marco’s voice rang like a tolling bell in his head as he ran along the corridor from the library, not knowing where to go or what to do. Instinct told him to go to the dormitory, so that was where he headed, taking the steps two at a time and ignoring the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind him. “Jean!” Marco shouted again, and this time it wasn’t in his mind but real, panting, breathing behind him. Jean put on an extra burst of speed as he reached the top of the stairs and turned sharply to the right. He wasn’t sure if his chest was sobbing from the effort of running, or from fear – it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow himself to cry about it – _couldn’t_ allow himself to cry about it – and as he threw the door of the dormitory open and stormed in, he was in his right mind to write to his father and ask to be taken home. He stopped dead.

He wasn’t the only person in the dormitory. A huddle of boys were sat on his bed – _his_ bed – and looked up like hunted rabbits when he entered the room. Two of them jumped away like Jean would shoot them, retreating back to their own beds looking anxious. Jean saw why. They had stripped his bedsheets back, up-ended the drawers of his bedside table onto the mattress, and were poking their hands through what they found there. His things. His personal things. Jean opened his mouth to demand what the hell they thought they were doing – and then he saw the letter clasped in Eren’s hand.

Marco skidded around the hall a second later, still calling out Jean’s name, but the last “Jean!” was cut off abruptly.

Jean felt what was left of his stomach fall out.

Eren looked up from the letter, his eyes as wide and horrified as Marco’s had been moments before, but for a completely different reason. Eren wasn’t good at languages, Marco had told Jean, but even he knew what French looked like written down. The letter he was holding wasn’t written in French. It wasn’t written in English, either.

Eren’s eyes narrowed, a curled look beginning to appear around his mouth, and Jean went very cold. Eren jabbed a finger in Jean’s direction, his hand shaking ever so slightly. “He’s a GERMAN,” he spat, the sound venomous and biting to Jean’s ears. “He’s a goddamn Boche.”

The name hit Jean like a slap in the face. He took a step forward, and the boys on his bed recoiled. Jean stopped, the cold horror seeping up his body like he had just stepped into an incredibly icy puddle. They were looking at him as though he were a stranger, like he hadn’t shared their classes and borrowed their pencils and played them at sport. Perhaps he was a stranger. He looked from each suspicious, disgusted face, and tried to explain. “My father, he is an ambassador,” he said, the words sounding thick on his tongue as he tried desperately to remain in English. “He is not a bad man. He is not an enemy.”

“He’s writing to you in German!” Eren exploded. “For all we know he could be writing you secret messages. You could be spying on us for him.”

Jean scoffed, trying to fight down the panic that was rising like acid up his throat. “You are crazy.”

“You’re a blood traitor!” Eren snapped. “You’re a goddamn dirty blood traitor!” He was on his feet now, the letter in his hand threatening to tear at the tightness of his grip. “You’re a goddamn German maggot, worming your way in like some… some _virus.”_

“Shut your mouth!” Jean hissed, though the chill in his own voice was quelled by the fire in Eren’s.

“Your Jerry friends gave my father shellshock!” Eren all but screamed at him. “They ruined families!”

“Do you not think that your soldiers did the same to them?” Jean demanded, as calmly as he was able.

Eren fixed him with a repulsed look. “And you got all cosy to Marco. Thought he would befriend you. Thought he’d give a damn about you, when all this time you and your German mates killed his brother at Ypres!”

Jean looked over his shoulder in enough time to see Marco flinch. Something haunted crossed the other boy’s eyes, and for a moment Jean imagined it. He saw a boy like Marco, taller and leaner, rushing to the offensive. He saw the German soldiers opening fire, saw the boys fall, twisting in the air like puppets whose strings had been cut. He imagined the screaming. He opened his mouth to tell Marco it wasn’t like that, that he didn’t know anything. It would be no use. There was a hollow look to Marco’s expression. He was not in the right mind to listen, even if Jean had screamed it at him.

His jaw set as he turned back to Eren. That was the final straw. “Take that back,” Jean snarled. The other boys drew back, shooting worried glances to the door and the matron that lay beyond them. “Take that back,” Jean repeated, “or I swear to God I will make you regret it.”

Eren shook his head, a grim smile fixed on his face. “No,” he said, “I don’t think I will.”

Jean had tried so hard to keep his temper. He had weighted it down with the thought of what his father would do, what would happen to his reputation, what school he would go to next. All of a sudden, those weights flew away. Jean’s anger exploded out of him like an underwater volcano, boiling at its centre. All he could think about was Marco’s face, gaunt in memory and horror.

* * *

Her was sat in the Headmaster’s office again. This time, he was nursing a split lip and a bruised cheek, of which a cold compress was resting against. The Headmaster was shouting at him, spittle flying from his mouth as though he were a bulldog with distemper, and Jean sat there and took it like a soldier. His eyes didn’t waver from the Headmaster’s bulk, nor did his knees shake with nerves. He just sat, his jaw clenched and his eyes furrowed into a glare, as he was told in no uncertain terms what a rotten boy he was.

He’d broken Eren’s nose before he was pulled away by a passing teacher. The dormitory boys had been too terrified to move, watching in sick fascination as he and Eren fought like sailors, kicking and spitting and punching. There were no Queensberry Rules or etiquette to practice – they had just punched and kicked until they could punch and kick no more. Once he had been grabbed by the scruff of his neck and dragged away, Jean only looked to Marco. He was staring at Jean like he was seeing him for the first time. It wasn’t a good impression. Nonetheless, he had followed Jean down the hallway to the Headmaster’s office, hands shoved deep in his pockets and his cream sweater rolled up to the elbows despite the cold. Maybe the anger kept him warm.

Jean knew he was going to get expelled. He’d known it as he sat, slumped against the wall opposite the Headmaster’s office, with Marco beside him. There was nothing left to lose. It had already been lost. Before he’d been called in, he grabbed Marco’s hand and squeezed. “Please keep writing,” he said, the French as soft and gentle as he could muster. “Your father doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Please, in the nicest possible sense, please grow a backbone and stand up to him. You’re worth more than this.” It was out of turn, and far too bold for someone who had just been apprehended for punching a fellow student, but Jean didn’t care. Marco had to know that one person, at least, believed in him.

Marco’s eyes never left Jean as he turned and walked inside, shutting the door with a generous creak behind him. He felt them still burning on him as he took a seat, and there the incoherent shouting began.

Jean understood a little of what the Headmaster was screaming at him. He picked up a few phrases: ‘disgrace’, ‘German’ and ‘unacceptable’ seemed to be the man’s particular favourites. He didn’t ask for Jean’s side of the story – at least, he didn’t pause for breath long enough to ask for it – but Jean felt it was a hopeless endeavour anyway. That was why, when the Headmaster did take time to suck in air, Jean wasn’t feeling particularly confident. He braced himself, and waited for the axe to fall.

* * *

“So I’m not expelled.”

Marco looked up from his seat.

Jean bit his lip as he stood before him, holding the compress at his side to see him clearer. Marco’s brows rose so high they disappeared momentarily into his hair. “You’re not?” he asked. He sounded surprised. Jean didn’t blame him; he was in a state of denial too.

“No,” he said, “I’m not. I have detention for the entirety of the spring term, and I’m not allowed to attend any excursions, but I’m still here.” He shrugged. The Headmaster had been forced to call in the French teacher to poorly translate the level of punishment, but Jean got the concept sharpish. He was not going to be having fun for a long time – but he was still a student at the school. It was more of a punishment than expulsion could ever be, especially now everyone in their dorm likely thought him to be a German spy or dangerous maniac.

“Oh.” Marco sighed. “That’s good.” He paused. “Do you want to take a walk outside?”

Jean hesitated, wondering if there was a trap involved in it at all, but nodded.

The day was bright and icy as they stepped out into the school grounds, the sudden chill causing Jean to wrap his arms around himself and shiver. The snow was still blanketing the ground, though it was tainted with muddy footprints and churned to slush in some parts. They walked through it regardless, ignoring the freezing water seeping into their shoes, and for a moment Jean could pretend nothing had happened. Then Marco spoke.

“So,” he said, “you are German.”

Jean winced. It was a statement, cold cut and clinical, and yet it still managed to sound accusatory. It was hard, Jean thought, for Marco to sound stern when speaking French. Somehow, he had managed it.

“I am half German,” he answered, quietly. He caught Marco’s expression out of the corner of his eye, and he shut his own in shame for his own blood. “My father, he was born in Berlin. He is an ambassador for the country. My mother, she was a singer in Paris. They met when they were young, and fell in love the way fools did before the world went mad.” He scuffed his shoes in the snow and heaved out a sigh, his breath turning to smoke in the air. “Sometimes I wish they hadn’t.”

Marco said nothing. Jean ploughed on.

“I didn’t know any soldiers,” he said, his voice shivering on the fresh air. “My brother fought for Germany, but I don’t know where he is. I haven’t stepped foot in Germany since my grandparents died.” He chanced another look at Marco. “Please, believe me. I do not know anything abo-”

“I believe you.”

Jean blinked. “You do?”

Marco let out a small chuffing noise that Jean took to be amusement. “Eren says the things he does because he is scared. He does not know what the enemy looks like. He did not expect them to look like you.” He stopped in the middle of the path and looked up, the skin on his arms pimpled with the cold. Jean shivered still more.

“I am not an enemy, Marco,” he pressed. “I swear, I’m not.”

“I know that.” Marco said, more consciously now. “I’m not mad at you, Jean. You couldn’t be an enemy if you tried.”

“So… I can still come to yours for Christmas?”

Marco snorted. “Yes, you can still come for Christmas. If you want to.”

“I want to,” Jean said, too quickly.

Marco didn’t appear to notice. He was still looking up at the sky, eyes fixed on a point Jean couldn’t see, and he wondered if there was anything there at all. When Marco met his eye, he flushed in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. “Did you really mean it?” he asked.

Jean frowned. “What?”

“That I’m a good writer. That you think I should carry on?”

“Yes,” Jean said without hesitation. It was silly for Marco to have even asked. “I want to be able to read your articles. You have to keep writing so I can read them.”

To his surprise, Marco laughed. It was a deep, earthy sound. “You haven’t read any of my articles, and you’re willing to bet I’m good?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “What kind of person are you, Jean Kirschtein?”

It was a valid question. It was a question to which Jean himself wasn’t sure of the answer. Marco had said it fondly, a smile on his face that matched the blush on his face, and Jean found himself smiling back. “I know because you are one of the most patient and wonderful people I have ever met,” he said. “And I was always taught that writing is a twin to its creator. And I am sorry,” he added, a little mollified, “if that makes you uncomfortable.”

Marco’s gaze fell to his feet, his teeth grazing his lip as he thought to himself. The silence that stretched between them was almost unbearable. Jean realised that yes, he had made Marco uncomfortable, and that was about as bad as hearing that he was to be cleaning bathrooms and pulling weeds for the better half of three months. He shuffled his weight and tried his best to look nonchalant. He’d done it again. He’d stepped too far. He’d gotten too goddamn arrogant, and thought that he could be happy without having to try too hard.

He felt something skim his hand, and looked down.

Marco’s hand was sliding into his.

It didn’t have the firmness of a handshake, or the force of a hit. It was just a hold, a gentle connection between the both of them, and as Jean watched their hands, entranced, Marco’s fingers threaded through his own and stayed there, warming his palm. When he looked back up, eyes wide, Marco was smiling. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice far too breathless for his liking.

Marco’s smile brightened. “Growing a backbone.” With a gentle tug, he led Jean away, down the small path away from the school building.

Jean had many things to write about in his next letter. He had to enclose a note from the Headmaster regarding his fight with Eren, which concluded that, in no uncertain terms, Jean was on a final warning. He wrote about making a friend who spoke French and having a place to be for the Christmas holidays. He wrote that he and Eren had reached an unsteady truce, after Jean had taught him how to use French insults with the deadliest of accuracy. He wrote that there were many things he’d learnt from enrolling in an English school, more than he had ever thought possible. He thought it best to leave out mention of another boy’s hand fitting into his far better than any girl’s, or how every smile or laugh felt like a reward well earned.

And, as it turned out, Jean greatest achievement was learning that Marco kissed in the same way he spoke; warm, soft, and full of a promise of home.


End file.
